Z Protocol Partners with Core Foundation on AI Agent Privacy

Core Foundation, the steward of the Core blockchain and creator of Satoshi Plus consensus, is partnering with Z Protocol to build a privacy platform for AI agents launching later this year. Z will use Core’s infrastructure to secure its platform and receive support from the Foundation to expand Satoshi Plus adoption.

This collaboration comes as AI moves from hype to actual impact with AI agents, whose market size is projected to surpass $100 billion by 2032. This growth will drive both on-chain activity and surveillance.

Already, the number of agents acting on behalf of users has exceeded 20,000. As these numbers increase, they generate significantly more observable on-chain activity, which surged by over 86% in 2025. Meanwhile, Z is enabling AI agents to operate anonymously on apps for autonomous use.

“AI agents are the most exposed actors on-chain and the least equipped for it. They transact at a scale humans never will, and every transaction becomes a permanent record of their principal’s strategy, relationships, and finances,” said Z co-founder, Kieran Dennis, and Core Initial Contributor. “If you want privacy for humans, you start by giving their agents private rails. That’s Z.”

Z is a programmable Zcash-powered privacy platform that has integrated three main elements into its design.

This includes a shielded pool to hold assets, keeping balances hidden and making activities unlinkable to the actors behind them by routing each app interaction through a fresh stealth address.

For seamless activity, Z has designed its ecosystem to be a vertically integrated application layer, covering private trading (Z Trade), lending and borrowing (Z Lend), a private stablecoin (USDZ), yield-bearing private dollars (yUSDZ), liquid staking (stZEC/stZ), and more.

Meanwhile, standardized interfaces, application-specific integrations, and controlled execution environments allow users to define parameters for their autonomous systems to work in. Zcash provides privacy through zero-knowledge proofs. Z partnered with Core Foundation to secure its applications with a Zcash-based version of the Satoshi Plus model.

This allows Z token stakers, ZEC miners, and holders to participate.

Satoshi Plus is Core’s innovative hybrid consensus mechanism that combines Bitcoin security with smart contract capabilities. This consensus algorithm powers Core blockchain, a network that serves as a coordination and revenue layer for Bitcoin products.

Since launching in 2023, Core has been working on making Bitcoin an active asset through yield generation and collateral utilization. The network pioneered self-custodial Bitcoin staking, with over $150 million worth of BTC currently earning yield without giving up ownership of their asset.

Now, in line with its revenue roadmap, whose focus is on promoting revenue-generating systems, Core has partnered with Z, which “fits perfectly into the roadmap by extending Core’s infrastructure to Zcash, enabling more value to flow to CORE token holders,” said Core Initial Contributor Brendon Sedo.

As part of this collaboration, Z will be introducing mechanisms that align with the Core ecosystem. Z will buy back CORE tokens using fees from transactions. CORE holders get early access to airdrops and token distributions.

So, as AI agents increasingly dominate on-chain activity, Z’s Zcash-powered privacy stack with Core’s Satoshi Plus consensus and robust ecosystem will address the pressing need for secure, anonymous, and efficient transaction infrastructure while unlocking new utility for both users and developers.

With its planned launch in Q2 2026, the platform aims to safeguard sensitive activity and activate idle ZEC capital through a revenue-generating application stack.